32 



The Weekly Florists' Review. 



Apbil 0, 1908. 



a summer crop by putting in a novable 

 bench. , ,, 



Question of Cost. 



Mr. Wilson, if I recall correctly, said 

 that the cost of erecting a one-piece 

 bench is almost a third less than making 

 and placing a sectional bench, with the 

 added advantage of perfect alignment, 

 making a handsome, neat, permanent job. 

 I hope more Eeview readers who have 

 been experimenting will give us the 

 benefit of their results. 



Charles H. Totty. 



SOWING LAWN SEED. 



Will you kindly tell us the best way to 

 sow grass seed for a new lawn, where 

 the ground has been filled in from bot- 

 tom soil of a new house, without using 

 manure, as it would be too inconvenient 

 for me to use it here? Please let me 



know what fertilizer is most suitable to 

 use, and how, etc. H. K. 



If it is inconvenient to use rotten 

 barnyard manure, purchase a regular 

 lawn fertilizer. One containing bone 

 and wood ashes is made and sold under 

 the name of bone-ash fertilizer. Mix 

 this thoroughly with four or five times 

 its bulk of fine earth. Scatter evenly 

 over the surface and harrow into the 

 ground. If space is too small to harrow, 

 use a long-toothed iron rake. The fer- 

 tilizer should not be put on heavier than 

 at the rate of 2,000 pounds per acre. 

 Keep your ground well stirred up until 

 you seed, in order to kill as many weeds 

 as possible. 



Choose a calm day for sowing the 

 seed. Experience is needed to scatter 

 grass seed properly. Sow, however, as 

 evenly as possible. Four bushels will 



seed an acre. A gallon will suffice for 

 1,200 square feet. A good mixture for 

 your location (New Jersey) will be one 

 of Kentucky bluegrass and Red Top with 

 the addition of a little Rhode Island 

 bent. Over half the seed sjiould be of 

 the first named grass. After seeding, use 

 an iron rake to scratch the ground over 

 thoroughly. Then use a roller, either 

 stone or iron, the heavier the better. 



The better you prepare your land, the 

 finer lawn you will have. The disadvan- 

 tage of using farmyard manure is that 

 it brings such multitudes of weed seeds 

 into the ground. By using fertilizer 

 you overcome this trouble. You will still 

 have an abundance of weeds, and these 

 must be pulled out carefully from time 

 to time. Use a scythe for the first cut- 

 ting and not a lawn mower, and by occa- 

 sional rollings, you will get a nice, firm 

 surface. C. W. 



MAXIMUM NUMBER OF CUTTINGS. 



In his reply to Mr. Osborn, in the 

 Review of March 19, Mr. Baur touched 

 on a subject which I have been intend- 

 ing to ask his opinion of for a long 

 time, but postponed it from time to time, 

 simply to give someone else the chance 

 to ask the question and thus I might 

 derive the information at another's ex- 

 pense. The question I am so much in- 

 terested in is as to the number of car- 

 nation cuttings which we may take from 

 a plant and at the same time get a 

 fair quantity and a good quality of 

 flowers. We used to figure on about 

 ten to fifteen to a plant on the old- 

 timers, like Joost, Crocker, Louise, etc., 

 but how about the two Imperials, Aristo- 

 crat, White Perfection, Enchantress and 

 Pink Enchantress? 



We bought last fall, from the field, 

 250 Aristocrat, 250 Pink Imperial, 100 

 Imperial and 600 Pink Enchantress, and 

 while they all produced a fair quantity 

 of bloom from about December 1 on, 

 the cuttings on all of them were not 

 abundant by any means, and we had to 

 resort to what Mr. Skidelsky styles a 

 massacre, to get enough for our own 

 planting. Next year, or rather next sea- 

 son, we simply dug down and pulled 

 the plants all to pieces, using every bit 

 of available wood, and we only got about 

 eight cuttings to a plant. AH are just 

 about rooting nicely now, and almost 

 ready to take out of the sand. Of course, 

 the plants were planted rather late, 

 from September 3 to September 15, and, 

 as usual, new varieties are not any too 

 large, but they ill seemed to take hold 

 of the soil and go right ahead and we 

 certainly have no kick coming. 



As to quality of bloom, Aristocrat 

 and Pink Imperial are especially good 

 with us, and I would have liked to have 

 more young stuff. Pink Enchantress and 

 Enchantress are both shy in producing 

 cuttings. In a cut, say, of 100 Pink 

 Enchantress, we would not get more than 

 about six cuttings and . the plants were 

 very strong when benched. The only 

 fault we have to find with it is a rather 

 weak stem during winter, but now the 

 stems are much stronger and the flow- 

 ers are fine. 



You may consider this epistle a kind of 

 "butting in," as it were, but I believe 

 a paper on the foregoing subject would 

 interest many other readers of the Re- 

 view. L. G. 



This is a problem which confronts 

 every grower from time to time in han- 

 dling varieties of which there is only 

 a limited stock and which are desirable 

 enough to make him want a large quan- 

 tity for future planting. 



To begin with, I will say that we 

 have learned that you cannot get a 

 maximum quantity of both blooms and 

 cuttings from the same plants. You 

 must choose between the two. In the 

 case of standard varieties, when the cut- 

 tings sell at $20 per thousand, there 

 is little, if any, difference between the 

 value of the blooms a plant will pro- 

 duce and that of the cuttings it would 

 produce if cut back and worked for 

 cuttings. If your trade will use all the 

 blooms you can cut, it will be just as 

 cheap for you to buy what extra cuttings 

 you need from some reliable grower. 

 When the cuttings sell for $50 per thou- 

 sandi however, the story reads differently. 



I can answer your question best, per- 

 haps, by describing our method in han- 

 dling new varieties which we want to 

 test and at the same time propagate in 

 quantity. Conducting a rooted cutting 

 business as we do, we naturally must 

 propagate as rapidly as we can of all 

 such varieties as prove desirable, both 

 for our own stock and for orders. As 

 most varieties meet with a good sale 

 the second year, the cuttings are of 

 greater value to us than the blooms, ex- 

 cept that we want to see the quality of 

 the blooms through the season as far 

 as possible. We always try to get our 

 stock of new varieties on the place dur- 

 ing January and February, so that we 

 can get good, strong plants, even if a 

 variety is not a very vigorous grower. 

 If we have good plants to house early in 

 August, we can usually tell by the mid- 

 dle of December how free a variety will 

 be during the middle of the season ; also, 

 whether it comes into bloom early and 

 is continuous or not. In fact, we can 

 get a pretty good line on its general 

 behavior by that time. 



By January 1 we usually find a nice 

 lot of young breaks from the stubs 

 where blooms were cut during October 

 and November, and these we take off 

 and put in sand. As fast as such breaks 

 appear we take them off, when of prop- 

 er size, and we find that every few 

 weeks we can take off a batch. All the 

 blooming shoots which the plant car- 

 ries January 1 are allowed to come into 

 bloom — not only those which have run 

 up some, but all the short ones, too. We 

 take only breaks which come after the 

 bloom is cut. This serves a double pur- 

 pose. It gives us an opportunity to see 



